2001: A Space Odyssey

It has been 40 years since the publication of this classic science-fiction novel that changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves. From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man adventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.

The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city - intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

Fight Club

When a listless office employee (the narrator) meets Tyler Durden, his life begins to take on a strange new dimension. Together they form Fight Club - a secretive underground group sponsoring bloody bare-knuckle boxing matches staged in seedy alleys, vacant warehouses, and dive-bar basements. Fight Club lets ordinary men vent their suppressed rage, and it quickly develops a fanatical following.

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the facts that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces; (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations; and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul Bäumer is just 19 years old when he and his classmates enlist. They are Germany’s Iron Youth who enter the war with high ideals and leave it disillusioned or dead. As Paul struggles with the realities of the man he has become, and the world to which he must return, he is led like a ghost of his former self into the war’s final hours. All Quiet is one of the greatest war novels of all time, an eloquent expression of the futility, hopelessness and irreparable losses of war.

David Copperfield

Based in part on Dickens's own life, it is the story of a young man's journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among its gloriously vivid cast of characters, he e.ncounters his tyrannical stepfather, Mr. Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; the frivolous, enchanting Dora; and one of literature's great comic creations, the magnificently impecunious Mr. Micawber.

Hell Divers: The Hell Divers Trilogy, Book 1

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers - men and women who risk their lives by diving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

Alas, Babylon

This true modern masterpiece is built around the two fateful words that make up the title and herald the end - “Alas, Babylon.” When a nuclear holocaust ravages the United States, a thousand years of civilization are stripped away overnight, and tens of millions of people are killed instantly. But for one small town in Florida, miraculously spared, the struggle is just beginning, as men and women of all backgrounds join together to confront the darkness....

Invisible

Everyone thinks Emmy Dockery is crazy. Obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases, Emmy has taken leave from her job as an FBI researcher. Now all she has are the newspaper clippings that wallpaper her bedroom, and her recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire. Not even Emmy's ex-boyfriend, field agent Harrison "Books" Bookman, will believe her that hundreds of kidnappings, rapes, and murders are all connected.

PerryMartinBookReviews says:"Does a serial killer exist if no one knows?"

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

Deliverance

The setting is the Georgia wilderness, where the state's most remote white-water river awaits. In the thundering froth of that river, in its echoing stone canyons, four men on a canoe trip discover a freedom and exhilaration beyond compare. And then, in a moment of horror, the adventure turns into a struggle for survival as one man becomes a human hunter who is offered his own harrowing deliverance.

The Clan of the Cave Bear: Earth's Children 1

Clan of the Cave Bear is the first novel in Jean M. Auel's magnificent best-selling epic of life 35,000 years ago. Leave the 21st century and go back to Ice Age Europe. Follow Ayla, a Cro-Magnon child who loses her parents in an earthquake and is adopted by a tribe of Neanderthal, the Clan. See how the Clan's wary suspicion is gradually transformed into acceptance of this girl, so different from them, under the guidance of its medicine woman, Iza, and its wise holy man, Creb. Immerse yourself in a world dictated by the demands of survival in a hostile environment, and be swept away in an epic tale of love, identity and struggle.

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel of the Roaring Twenties is beloved by generations of readers and stands as his crowning work. This new audio edition, authorized by the Fitzgerald estate, is narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain). Gyllenhaal's performance is a faithful delivery in the voice of Nick Carraway, the Midwesterner turned New York bond salesman, who rents a small house next door to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby....

Departure

En route to London from New York, Flight 305 suddenly loses power and crash-lands in the English countryside, plunging a group of strangers into a mysterious adventure that will have repercussions for all of humankind. Struggling to stay alive, the survivors soon realize that the world they've crashed in is very different from the one they left. But where are they? Why are they here? And how will they get back home?

The Forever War

William Mandella is a soldier in Earth's elite brigade. As the war against the Taurans sends him from galaxy to galaxy, he learns to use protective body shells and sophisticated weapons. He adapts to the cultures and terrains of distant outposts. But with each month in space, years are passing on Earth. Where will he call home when (and if) the Forever War ends?

Locke & Key

Based on the best-selling, award-winning graphic novel series Locke & Key - written by acclaimed suspense novelist Joe Hill (NOS4A2, Horns) and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez - this multicast, fully dramatized audio production brings the images and words to life.

The Chemist

She used to work for the US government, but very few people ever knew that. An expert in her field, she was one of the darkest secrets of an agency so clandestine it doesn't even have a name. And when they decided she was a liability, they came for her without warning. Now she rarely stays in the same place or uses the same name for long. They've killed the only other person she trusted, but something she knows still poses a threat. They want her dead, and soon.

Elantris: Tenth Anniversary Special Edition

In 2005, Brandon Sanderson debuted with Elantris, an epic fantasy unlike any other then on the market. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Tor is reissuing Elantris in a special edition, a fresh chance to introduce it to the myriad listeners who have since become Sanderson fans.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

The Great Escape

It was a split-second operation as delicate and as deadly as a time bomb. It demanded the concentrated devotion and vigilance of more than six hundred men for every hour, every day, and every night for more than a year. With only their bare hands and crude homemade tools, they sank shafts, built underground railroads, forged passports, drew maps, faked weapons, and tailored German clothes.

Starfire

On June 30, 1908, an object fell from the sky, releasing more energy than a thousand Hiroshima bombs. A Siberian forest was flattened, but the strike left no significant crater. The anomaly came to be known as the Tunguska Event, and scientists have never agreed whether it was the largest meteor strike in recorded history - or something else. Alien artifacts have been uncovered since the 1908 event, and a new star drive is discovered.

The Black Echo: Harry Bosch Series, Book 1

For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch - hero, maverick, nighthawk - the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal. The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell.

Publisher's Summary

The United States government is given a warning by the preeminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere.

Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to "collect organisms and dust for study." One of them falls to earth, landing in a desolate area of Arizona.

Twelve miles from the landing site, in the town of Piedmont, a shocking discovery is made: the streets are littered with the dead bodies of the town's inhabitants, as if they dropped dead in their tracks.

Horton Hears a WhoBased on thinking out of the box (not cliché in 1969), Crichton was a genius. His theories on possible aliens is not the expected. After he explains them you will be a believer. He is to biology, what Clarke was to rockets. I have always had a great interest in biology and the diversity it can have. I have a certain awe and wonder on the many different places life takes hold, on the many different strategies life comes up with. Life is everywhere, bottom of the ocean, deserts, and in the air, so why not in space?

I'M SURE IT'S A FLUKEThis book is not for everyone. I would not call it hard science, which is what I call books that have so much complex science they are hard for the average person to understand. The science is understandable, it is just the plethora of facts that are included. At times, I felt, surely he could have just gave us a summary of the facts instead of laboriously going over each and every detail. In the hardback some of these are in graphs and drawings. In the audible version they are monotonous. In one part we are read a TRANSCRIPT OF VOICE COMMUINICATIONS SCOOP MISSION CONTROL, in which we hear the hours, minutes and seconds before each verbal communication. These communications are often 2 or three seconds apart, yet we still get 0097, 03, 31, etc... There are some other faults, such as it is dated and the amount of times the geniuses miss obvious clues. The reader gets them immediately and we find ourselves screaming at the radio, it's the acid stupid, the acid. Also the statement is made that we have never had a biological crisis. I would think the Black Plague or the Influenza in 1918, would be consider biological crises.

WILDFIREBesides coming up with a great alien invasion, Crichton comes up with a great underground facility. The emergency secret group of scientists and doctors, who must answer the call immediately when something happens is also pretty cool. He used this again in Sphere.

The narrator is sufficient, not great. He has a gravely voice that he uses for a number of characters. This book is not about character development, so that lack of distinction does not play that heavily as it would in some other books.

If you are a fan of Arthur C. Clarke you will enjoy this book. If books with too much data, turns you off, then read one of Crichton's later books. When this was written, data, was important to Science Fiction books. The concepts and imagination of Crichton over ride some of the flaws in the writing style. Don't get me wrong, there are some very exciting action parts to the book, it is not all about the numbers. I give the book a B+.

The author leaves just enough out of the plot to make this a follow along detective novel for biochemists and science fiction enthusiasts alike. Get ready to day dream all types of alien biological attacks for the next few days, because when microorganisms come from space, your mind can make anything believable. I wish this book was 2 times longer, I feel the author finished it in a rush!

Great book by Mr. Crichton, but gut wrenching performance and technique.

What didn’t you like about David Morse’s performance?

When there was dialogue, there was back and forth definition of who was talking, akin to watching a Ping-Pong ball go back and forth. It became nauseating and deplorable to listen to. I think this could have been edited in a way to be less annoying.

Okay story, and good narration, but the contents are not best suited for listening. This book has several long boring sections that I'd quickly skim if I were reading. They slow the pace. Mostly long expositions on the science and politics of germ warfare, the design of biohazard facilities, and the nature of a crisis. The book is better. The movie is better. Crichton's Jurassic Park is a more riveting listen.

There's no doubt in my mind that the Andromeda Strain is a clever idea, particularly when it's date of origin is considered. The book sets up this idea very well with David Morse's almost dispassionate narration setting bleak opening scenes and hinting at tension that surely had to follow. The description of the Strain's impact on one small American town is a genuinely powerful scene.

At this point though the author seems to almost switch modes. As he introduces the team being set up to investigate the strain he detours into detailed bios of each of the men's achievements listing scientific papers they have written and how their careers have developed. This unfortunately then set the tone for the rest of the book where I feel Crichton seemed anxious to demonstrate his research or knowledge to the detriment of his story. To be fair I now feel I have a better grip on the pros and cons of optical versus electron microscopes than before but that's not what I read fiction for and with Morse's rather dry delivery it was hard going in parts.

To be fair to Morse there were a number of aspects of the book that would have worked very well in print at the time but were not at all suited to the audio format. An example of this would be the lengthy rendition of the communications between the mission control teams where each short sentence was preceded by a timestamp like "Sixteen hours, forty-six minutes and twenty three seconds". I imagine this worked well in print, the reader could skim-read the timestamps, but in audio poor David had to churn them out in seemingly endless monotone. Other examples included computer communications with long serial numbers and control statements. Possibly this is on occasion where a version edited for audio would be better than the original. It's something I'd rarely suggest but here I think it would make sense.

That said, it is a clever story, albeit with what I felt was a less than satisfactory ending. It does require patience and the lengthy scientific tangents means that the story never develops at a genuinely entertaining pace.

Well that's my opinion. On the other hand this was of course the novel that established Crichton and the rest as they say is history. I do think that it's probably better consumed as a novel rather than an audiobook but I also wonder if Crichton was ever tempted to revisit the Andromeda Strain as I think the story could have developed so much further.

17 of 20 people found this review helpful

Cindy

6/16/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Monotonous voice, good story"

I've read this story before and rally enjoyed it. But I'm afraid I did not get on with the narrators still, spoilt it for me. Far too monotonous.

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

Adrian

Norwich, United Kingdom

7/9/15

Overall

Story

"Imaginative and clever"

I have read this as a paperback and watched the movie numerous times and still love it. The audio book is tread well with great character.

Most sci-fi is just space cowboys and Indians with lumpy foreheads. Andromeda strain is the antidote: original and thoughtful. The first time I read it, I found parts a little far-fetched and the ending a bit of a cop-out. On each subsequent reading, I have taken in more subtleties and appreciated Crichton's writing even more. Simply put, this is the very finest sci fi I know.

7 of 8 people found this review helpful

londonbikerider

1/13/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Not for me"

A classic I guess but took long to get going for me. I switched to double speed and enjoyed the last third of the book where it picks up with the analysis of the virus. Thought the narration was done well

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

Todd Magers

Raleigh, NC United States

5/22/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Wonderful narration and story!!"

At first I was a bit uncertain as to how David Morse's voice fit the work, but by the second chapter I was was completely enthralled! Excellent overall work and brilliant work on the dialogue for the character Mr. Jackson. And of course, a very engaging story....hard to believe this was copyrighted 1969!!! Could easily be today.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

Rvt Derenzy-channer

London, UK

10/6/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Dull as dishwater"

What would have made The Andromeda Strain better?

A more eventful storyline would have made this better. I kept waiting for something to happen - it was very very descriptive about technical details and at times it felt like a technical handbook was being read out.

Has The Andromeda Strain put you off other books in this genre?

I haven't been put off the genre - but I am not sure I will listen to another Michael Crichton for a while.

What three words best describe David Morse’s voice?

Monotone

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

I was disappointed - the premise of the book enticed me to buy it - but with 2 hours and 5 minutes left to go - I just couldn't persevere any longer - I have abandoned it.

8 of 10 people found this review helpful

William

10/17/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"*Comic book guy voice* Worst. Ending. Ever."

By far the most anti-climactic book I've ever heard. Excellent story up to the last chapter, but a complete flop in the end. David morse reads the book excellently.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Ross

11/24/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Had potential but writing style doesn't suit"

What disappointed you about The Andromeda Strain?

The writing style is designed to suit the story, very militant and document/report style of writing, regularly braking into quoted short hand. I can see this working on paper but as an audio book it becomes annoying, disjointed and hard to follow.

Would you ever listen to anything by Michael Crichton again?

Yes

What aspect of David Morse’s performance might you have changed?

Vocal tone - to nasal in sound (probably down to the mic used)

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Andromeda Strain?

All short hand sections - however this would leave large plot holes

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

G

Bristol, United Kingdom

10/8/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Fizzled out"

This book starts off with a great idea and lots of interesting threads but for me the ending was a bit disappointing. I've found this is a common problem with apocalyptic sci-fi. There was enough material to make a book about twice as long and a more rounded story but unfortunately the author seemed in a rush to finish it and get it over with. I thought the performance was ok but there are several sections in the book where a list or stilted dialogue has to be read and there's really nothing much a narrator can do to enliven these

3 of 5 people found this review helpful

Robert Rawlins

7/10/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"Feels like a true story."

The era in which the book is set, and the way in which it is told from a.slightly retrospective angle makes it feel like the dramatisation of real events.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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